14,000 reasons to celebrate small charities

Small Charity Week kicks off soon with ‘I love small charities’ day. Here in Scotland we should start putting up the bunting early because we’ve got a lot to celebrate. We’re lucky to have one of the most diverse and active voluntary sectors in the world, with more charities per head than any other UK nation. Rural areas in particular are a lively hot bed of voluntary activity, with Shetland and Orkney topping the league tables. Even your ‘typical’ small Scottish town has more charities than you might think. At the start of the year we visited Bo’ness, our chosen Charity Town, and spoke to locals about their connections with charities. You can see the huge amount of community engagement in our video and our map of charities active in the area. So just how many small charities are there in Scotland?

people in Scotland have very strong personal connections with charities

Well, that depends on how you define ‘small’. I recently spoke to some housing associations. What they called a ‘small’ organistation in their sector would be large in the eyes of a project employing only a few staff. Which in turn would be large in the eyes of a local volunteer-run group. What we do know is that there are around 14,000 charities currently active across Scotland with annual budgets under £25,000 and a further 7,800 operating on less than £1million. Such a rich and active sector means that people in Scotland have very strong personal connections with charities. Our recent research found that nine out of 10 (89%) people had personally supported a charity in some way in the last year, donating money or goods, or giving their time as volunteers and supporters. And 84% had used a charity service in the last year. These strong personal connections mean that trust and confidence in Scotland remains strong despite negative media stories and dropping trust levels in the rest of the UK – a fact we celebrated at this year’s Gathering under the ‘I love charities’ banner. So is small beautiful? Well, some charities are of course small and want to keep it that way. Others are small but might want, or need, to grow. After all, most of the large charities working across Scotland today started life small. Take Enable Scotland. It started life in 1954 when five sets of parents wanted to see better services for their children who had learning disabilities. Sixty years later and they’ve grown from a few volunteers to one of Scotland’s largest charities. Regardless of whether a charity wants to stay small or grow, they can all sometimes feel like Cinderella: working away in the kitchen, never invited to the ball. Later this week we have another reason to celebrate, with the Scottish Charity Awards. And it won’t just be the big boys and girls who get to put on their party frocks. In the early days of the awards, it was often hard encouraging small charities to submit entries.Happily, alongside the popular Celebrating Communities award, we’ve seen previous winners of Charity of the Year include small organisations like Crossroads Harris and Toonspeak Young People’s Theatre. And more small charities than ever made it through to this year’s finalists. So let’s hear it for small charities everywhere. Celebrate your achievements. You deserve it! Small charities in numbers

• Small charities account for the bulk of the sector, and make significant contributions to local communities and well-being.
• There are over 14,000 charities operating across Scotland on annual budgets of less than £25k, often with no paid staff.
• In financial terms, these small charities account for less than 1% of the sector’s combined turnover (£83m)
• Half of small charities’ funds come from individuals through donations, membership fees, sales of goods, fees for activities and fundraising events.

To read more please vist our webapge on third sector funding and spending in 2013.